: (Jerry Goldsmith) The disastrous 1969
adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's series of novels in "The Alexandria
Quartet" foolishly attempted to work elements from all four books into
one film. While
retained the core parameters of the
stories as they existed on the page, all of the mystery and intrigue was
sucked out of the concept. The politics of 1938 Egypt and Palestine are
the subject of the movie, an Irish school teacher (Michael York)
inadvertently caught up in a complicated web of gun smuggling and
political corruption led by an affluent couple in which the beautiful
wife, Justine, is used as a sex pawn to lure powerful men and wield
influence that helps funnel weapons to the Palestinians while evading
British intelligence. While that general outline of a plot has all the
makings for a decent espionage thriller,
instead focuses
on the romantic infatuation the teacher has for this woman and the
inevitable heartbreak that awaits him. Justine is a one-woman wrecking
crew in the department of prolific fornication, and the movie
perpetually leaves cock-teased men with unsatisfactory results. The
production was highly problematic during its shooting, the first
director fired and the second one leading the movie to a $6 million
loss, quite sizable for the era. Rarely remembered decades later,
is a point of interest for collectors of composer Jerry
Goldsmith, whose role in the film reflected the same emphasis on
romanticism over intrigue. Significant portions of the film pass without
any score, and a few scenes utilize source samba music courtesy
Goldsmith and career orchestrator Herbert W. Spencer. Only a handful of
minutes of the score are concerned with accentuating the tragedy of the
killings and fear of the main characters. Instead, Goldsmith was tasked
with cranking up the exoticism factor and lay a pair of love themes on
top of that flavor. The resulting score is adequate to that task, but it
struggles to really shine in that each mode suffers from a dreamy haze
necessitated by the somber flashback narration and frustrating lack of
true heart and caring by most of the characters. Had Goldsmith written
this score in the 1990's, he may have endowed it with greater dramatic
flair, but only a few moments of that style prevail in his comparatively
restrained but still alluring 1969 sensibilities.
Understandably key to
Justine's appeal is the
exotic instrumentation, which consists of electric sitar, recorder, auto
harp, bouzouki, darbouka, and tablas. For whatever reason, the late
1960's and early 1970's experienced an odd, pop cultural renaissance for
sitars, and Goldsmith certainly wasn't immune to this trend. The
orchestra consists of strings and woodwinds but no discernable brass,
reflecting the composer's tact on
The Ballad of Cable Hogue at
the same time. Arabian and Greek rhythms are employed for propulsion and
mystery, maintaining interest for the score's more optimistic passages.
These movements particularly preview Goldsmith's television score for
The Going Up of David Lev a few years later. The pivotal costume
ball scene is served by Goldsmith's "Dance of Death" and Spencer's
"Samba Alexandria," both decent source pieces but the latter embodying
much more brazen enthusiasm. (Spencer's "Samba Chica" for the album
recording is also more spirited.) The little suspense material in the
score is handled with the composer's lighter dissonant shades and can be
very awkward in this context, especially in the "The Killing." This cue
is the final one heard in the context of the story, as all other action
went unscored thereafter. Three themes are intertwined with the
narrative in
Justine, the primary attraction being the one for
Justine and the teacher's crush on her. It's a pretty and enticing theme
with just a hint of tempestuous uncertainty, its progressions
fascinatingly previewing those of Goldsmith's much later and very
differently rendered main theme for
The Edge. The theme debuts
right away on electronic sitar in "Alexandria" and adds some depth with
strings later, though its beauty is better exposed in the tender, brief
treatment on strings in "Justine" and passage for recorder against
fluttering flute descents at the start of "The Farm," in which the idea
switches to more evocative strings before a playful ethnic conclusion.
The Justine theme is accelerated and sensuous in "The Beach" before an
almost suspenseful romantic extension and closes "The Telescope"
delicately and unfinished. The recorder carries the theme against very
careful flourishes of exoticism in "The Visit," strings eventually
increasing the intensity as the idea formalizes itself as a love theme.
After slight contemplation on eight flutes in "The Ruins," it finally
emerges again after much stewing in "Hands Off," and it lends one final
reminder of romantic inclinations in "End Title" in a big but solitary
performance at the end.
The main theme for the Justine character never really
takes off in the score. Still, Goldsmith adapted it into the light but
lush pop realm in "Justine" for the album specifically and afforded it a
touch of magic briefly in "The School." He extends this mode nicely in
the album's version of "The Farm" as well, allowing the idea better
enjoyment from those rearranged recordings. Also pervasive but not as
obvious is the conspiracy theme alternately for Justine's husband,
Nessim, which doubles as an identity for the desert setting. Its exotic
rhythm debuts with ominous undertones via an ascending and descending
motif in "The Camp" and laces the beginning and end of "The Beach,"
first with joy and later with fear. It briefly darkens the start of "The
Telescope" but then turns brightly positive again. Frantic on the sitar,
triangle, and drums in "The Meeting," the conspiracy theme opens "Hands
Off" on tense strings and sitar and guides parts of its midsection,
toils early in "End Title" on woodwind layers and cello, and is
translated into a more upbeat rendition in the album's arrangements of
"The School" and the end of "The Farm." Somewhat lost in the equation is
a vaguely French romance tune for Melissa (the belly dancer) and Darley
(the teacher), heard immediately on accordion over a wood block rhythm
in "Melissa & Darley" and then transitioning to woodwinds and strings in
a care free and pleasant atmosphere of love. The wood blocks are swapped
out for bongo drums with accordion in the album's distinct arrangement
for "Melissa," though the romantic piano sequence with acoustic guitar
in that track sounds distorted due to bad source tapes. There is
terrible audio distortion in the film versions of "The Visit" and "Hands
Off," and while the audio on the album's London recording is usually
much better, it still suffers from distortion in a few tracks. Still,
the album's performance of "Carnival Happening" is far broader in depth
to "Dance of Death," and "Alexandria," "Melissa & Darley," "The Beach,"
"The Telescope," and "End Title" are superior recordings of the same
cues from the film version. The album's "Ambush" is a more palatable
version of "The Killing," with dissonant lines reduced. In the end,
between the relatively poor sound quality of both recordings and the
somewhat muted attitude of the score's alluring romance and exoticism,
Justine is a very mixed bag. A re-recording might be able to
bring it to life, but it otherwise languishes on both its 1995 Tsunami
bootleg and Varèse Sarabande's limited 2003 Club release, the
latter the only offering with both the film and album recordings. Like
the titular character, the score for
Justine always promises more
satisfaction than it ultimately delivers.
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.18
(in 150 reviews)
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